Community Engagement
ReShape projects and activities are designed to promote a community-based approach through supporting and encouraging people living with HIV and/or HCV to participate in the decisions and the implementation of responses to the epidemic.
By generating dialogue and broaden the understanding of HIV/HCV and their underlying issues through social and public events, ReShape seeks to promote personal happiness and social well-being.
Where’s the Hope?
Dialogues for Solidarity
Where’s the Hope? Is a proposed series of inter-related community dialogues, in partnership with some of the leading UK HIV/HCV/sexual health and wellbeing sector organisers and organisations, with foreign experts, to explore the key challenges and gaps of the day, to promote solidarity, community engagement, organiser mentoring and effective initiatives. The series launched on Thursday 23rd March 2017 at 7pm with Sean Strub from the US, writer, activist and director of the SERO Project, introducing the series with a explorative look at the GIPA principles for the 21st Century. The series will run monthly for a year, on the last Thursday of every month. For details on the next session, please see our event page. Reports and videos of the sessions are available here.
The VITO Project, is a series of free monthly screenings launched in January 2015 with a screening of the Celluloid Closet. The project was created in association with the Cinema Museum to promote dialogue between different generations of LGBTs. The series provides an alternative space for LGBTs of all ages to watch films and share ideas.
Uniting Voices for HCV Elimination
Uniting Voices for HCV Elimination is a key stakeholder coalition that includes clinicians, researchers, organisations, HCV patients and former patients, people sitting on government bodies and pharmaceutical representatives. The project was initiated by ReShape HCV working group, in collaboration with the Hepatitis C Trust, and a meeting was convened in July 2016 to serve as a starting point for strategic and ongoing collaboration to proactively address gaps in the HCV treatment cascade.
The Uniting Voices coalition is currently focussing on 4 key populations: South Asians, HIV/HCV co-infected individuals, people who use drugs and prisoners and has identified 3 priority areas: Awareness raising, testing and community engagement. Coalition members are in the process of developing working plans for each of these populations with a set of appropriate targets for the next 6 months.
European ChemSex Forum
The European ChemSex Forum, 6-8 April 2016, London, UK was a preliminary intelligence gathering and networking event aiming to provide a platform to engage in international, cross-sector, multi-disciplinary dialogue and discussions around ChemSex – defined by the use of specific drugs (“Chems”) in a sexual context by Men who have Sex with Men (MSM), Transgender people and any other population disproportionately affected by HIV, hepatitis C and other sexually transmitted infections. The Forum was a joint project between International HIV Partnerships, 56 Dean Street, GMFA and ReShape.
The 2017 proposal is developing a working partnership of autonomous but linked testing, sexual health, wellbeing and ChemSex initiatives across WHO Europe, for a series of two-day ChemSex training / programme review & programme development events in late Autumn 2016, in regional centres, such as Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Helsinki or Copenhagen, St Petersburg, Paris, Belgrade or Athens, and London, in preparation for the 2nd European ChemSex Forum in October 2017, in Berlin, and the 3rd in a series of community testing meetings: “Beyond VCT Centres” as a satellite meeting at IAS Paris 2017.
A ChemSex specific listserv was developed by ReShape to facilitate networking at the European level on this topic.
PrEP Advocacy
ReShape is working closely with the United4PrEP coalition, a coalition of nearly one hundred organisations and individuals committed to encouraging the UK government to provide pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) nationally, to people at high risk of contracting HIV.
In collaboration with Sigma Research, the Medical Research Council and The Terrence Higgins Trust, ReShape ran a series of community events centred around the PROUD study documentary and discussions across the UK.
ReShape labs and roundtables
ReShape’s labs are small working groups, set up to identify gaps, needs and possible responses. These working groups are comprised of community representatives, activists, advocates, clinicians, researchers and organisations. Their mission is to promote activities (either inside ReShape or externally), and act as vehicles for further action and evaluation. All ReShape’s actions are borne out of the labs. ReShape ongoing labs include: ChemSex, prevention for MSM, migrants, Trans* people, Hepatitis C, Epidemic Stress Disorder and Staying Negative. If you are interested in starting a lab supported by ReShape, please contact ReShape Coordinator.
